The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [38]
The methods (and prices) of the LTD company represent a workable compromise for the mass market. Growers who sell to LTD harvest their fruit an average of three days later than other growers; the Stop & Shop supermarket chain in New England, which has developed one of the most active programs in the country to improve the quality of fruit, is one of their big customers. But nothing, I am told, beats a Ron Mansfield peach.
Elsewhere, the future looks grim. Most American stone fruit is grown in California—96 percent of all apricots, 90 percent of nectarines and plums, and 60 percent of freestone peaches and Bartlett pears. The fruit is harvested nearly rock hard, ten or fifteen days before it is ripe, to allow for rough picking, mechanical handling, and prolonged transportation. All but the firmest fruit would be destroyed by this ordeal. Under the California Tree Fruit Agreement—a joint federal-state-industry “marketing order” in effect in one form or other since 1933—growers could not ship their fruit unless it met a minimum standard known as California Well-Matured. This simply guaranteed that most tree fruit would be fully developed and consequently that it would improve at least in color and texture after harvest. Now the California stone-fruit growers want to harvest their produce even earlier.
Last year the plum growers pulled out of the agreement. Early this year a dissident group of peach and nectarine growers persuaded the USDA to add an alternate, lower standard known as U.S. No. 1 or U.S. Mature. This will allow them to harvest even earlier and greener provided they say so on their shipping cartons. One rationale is that Georgia peaches have long been held to the equivalent of the trifling U.S. No. 1 standard and can compete unfairly. And Colorado growers recently abandoned their federal-state inspection program entirely. To fruit fanciers, the old criteria were undemanding enough. The new system promises even less.
In a twist of fate, the predominantly Republican California growers were temporarily foiled by President Bush’s election-year moratorium on new federal regulations. For the new two-tier fruit inspection system to circumvent the moratorium and go into effect, the vice president’s Council on Competitiveness must certify that the regulations are “pro-growth,” a term apparently not intended in its horticultural sense. At this writing, the only person who can save America from a catastrophic plunge in the quality of its peaches and nectarines is Vice President Dan Quayle. Any bets?
July 1992
Hot Dog
Everybody’s in a panic these days about the dangers of eating raw shellfish. But I have a plan. I’ve decided to give up skiing this winter so that I can eat my fill. By my calculations, the chance of suffering a substantial injury in one day of skiing is ten times worse than the chance of getting sick from eating a plate of cold, plump, briny, succulent raw oysters or clams. It follows that if I give up ten days of skiing, I can feast on oysters twice a week for the entire year.
To be perfectly truthful, I’ve never skied a day in my life or eaten less than my fill of anything. My plan was born at supper with an unfortunate friend, fresh from the slopes and hospitals of Aspen, where he had broken his shoulder by crashing into a shrub on a downhill run. He wore a brace on his upper torso and needed help turning the pages of his menu. I immediately recovered from excessive feelings of sympathy as I watched my friend choose his food with a superstitious adherence to every modern nutritional fad and rumor he had ever heard. For the life of me, I cannot understand why some people are eager to take on all sorts of dangers and then go paranoid over a much less risky endeavor—especially when that endeavor is dinner.
We do have ample cause to be worried about seafood safety. An investigation in the February 1992 issue of Consumer Reports found that a full 44 percent of